Elise,
One thing Tony didn’t mention, and it’s a serious consideration, is the amount of mechanical/maintenance effort that can go into a kart (even without battle damage). On that basis alone, I’d tend to stay away from a 2-stroke engine, at least for now, as they are more finicky and maintenance-hungry than the LO206. Learning how to tune 2-strokes for race day is a fine art and a steep learning curve.
Also, changing seats can be a big pain in the rear. 60 pounds is a huge weight difference, so the mounting points will be very different. There probably will be a lot of pushing/forcing/grunting involved. You’ll be swapping out seat struts in addition to using the kart’s built-in mounting points, so you could be looking at as many as 12 different bolts, several of which might not be very easy to access.
My concern is that once you add swapping seats to all of the regular maintenance that can go with a kart, you’ll become discouraged as you’ll be spending too much time turning wrenches relative to the amount of time on the track.
